


A Couple of Good Eggs

by hufflepirate



Series: Gordonfam AU [1]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Adopted Children, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Light Angst, accidental teenager acquisition, near injury experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-07 01:00:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11048013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: AU where Jim is Selina's official legal guardian and he and Lee keep accidentally 'adopting' her friends.  They haven't been dating for long enough to have multiple teenage daughters together but whoops, here they are.Jim and Selina have a chat on the fire escape after Ivy almost stabs him, and then Jim and Lee sit in the kitchen, enjoying a well-earned moment of peace.





	A Couple of Good Eggs

**Author's Note:**

> I've only just started watching Gotham and I'm only through Season 2 Episode 6, but anyway Bridgit is fine and no one creepy has her, and everything is fine. I know I'm more than a season behind, but if anything awful is going to happen to any of my girls, just don't say anything, ok? Ok.

Jim was sitting with his feet hanging out over open air and his arms wrapped around the bars of the fire escape before he realized that he could have just gone into the hallway outside the front door. The girls were wearing off on him, and since the girls were nothing if not complicated, he had no idea how he felt about that.

Light, almost silent footsteps beside him told him Selina had followed even before he turned to look. She slid down to sit next to him, closer than she would have when she first came to live with him. They still hadn't gotten her to wear pajamas, but she'd shed her jacket, goggles, and boots, and that was enough to make her look smaller and more innocent. It was an illusion, but not a bad one, just now.

"So, Jim," she said, "We should probably talk." 

"Not right now, Selina."

"You gonna turn her in?" she asked bluntly, "She only tried to stab you a _little_ , you know."

He thought he should probably at least pretend to be considering it, but it was the middle of the night and he didn't much want to listen to the whole sales pitch. He told her the truth. "No."

"Oh," Selina said, shoulders deflating a little. He was so used to her looking ready for a fight that he hadn't even noticed the tension until it was gone. "Well, good. She didn't mean anything by it. And you _did_ kill her dad."

"That was-"

Selina waved him off with a single gloved hand, "I know, I know, that was Bullock. But you were _there_."

"Yeah, and her father tried to kill me with a _knife_. She knows that, right?"

"Sure," Selina answered, fixing him with a cynical glare, "I'm sure that's exactly what she was thinking when she woke up with you all up in her face. Like I said, she didn't mean anything."

"Yeah," he answered, "That's _exactly_ what it felt like."

Selina rolled her eyes expressively, but her smile looked almost fond. "You are _such_ an idiot. You should've just woken me up to begin with. I know what to do when she has nightmares."

Even if he'd wanted to, he wouldn't be able to put into words the reasons he hadn't done that, so he let it go.

Ivy and Selina slept in what used to be an office Lee kept for herself, their two twin beds jammed in tightly enough that none of them could really get to the desk that was still in the corner. He'd heard soft distressed noises on his way to bed after a long night's stakeout, and he'd pushed the door open to check on the girls.

The first thing he'd felt when the light from the hallway fell across Selina's calm, sleeping face was relief that she was alright.  He wasn't sure she'd believe him even if he tried to tell her that.

Ivy had been a different story, lashing out in her sleep with a soft whining noise, and even if he'd thought to get someone else to deal with it, he wasn't sure he could have stood to leave her like that. He wasn't sure he could have brought himself to disturb Selina on purpose, either. Not when she still slept on top of the covers so she could run without getting tangled if she needed to. Not that he could tell her that, either. She'd just accuse him of going soft and start walking all over him more than she already did.

But Selina was right, sort of, and he wasn't sure Ivy would have hit anything important even if the knife under her pillow had hit before he could get out of the way. "She only tried to stab me a little bit, huh?" he asked.

"Definitely. I've seen her try a lot harder, believe me. I don't know what I missed while I was asleep, but that swipe I saw was definitely at least half just supposed to scare you."

He sighed. There was more there, not really under the surface, but it was beyond what he could deal with at 3:00 in the morning while his girlfriend was trying to calm down a semi-murderous 13-year-old inside.

"Look, we could have stayed with Barbara if-"

He shook his head. "No. I couldn't ask that of her. Not even before - you know. And anyway, your paperwork's got my name on it, not hers."

"Well anyway, there isn't anywhere else _now_ ," Selina said.  

"I'm not gonna kick Ivy  _out_ , either."  That was more he shouldn't admit to just yet. It didn't stop it from being true.

"Good."

They settled into silence, listening to faint sirens several blocks away.

Selina broke the silence again a couple of minutes later, a pretty long stretch when she was in one of her chattier moods like this. "She hates you less now, you know. Like... it's less all the time. I think she's gonna be ok."

He tried not to snort at her. That implied she _hadn't_ thought Ivy was going to be ok when she first brought her home, but there wasn't much he could do about it now, either way.

"I'd feel better if she'd go to counseling, like Lee keeps suggesting."

"Jeez, I'm working on it! It's not like she's some rich kid who grew up with a therapist to boo-hoo to. Anyway, half those people are quacks."

There was a time when he would have argued with her about that, but he'd been at Arkham and he'd pulled their best doctor out to examine dead people, and he didn't have it in him to fight that fight right now, or maybe ever. "We're not gonna take her to a quack." 

"You're not gonna _take_ her anywhere. But I think I can get her to go. Maybe another month."

"You could go with her, you know," he suggested.

"Nah, save your money. I'm ok."

The miraculous and infuriating thing about that was that she seemed to be right. Selina was a mess, but she was a pretty well-adjusted mess as far as these things went.

He wanted to say something to her, something about caring, and she stood up abruptly, like she sensed it coming somehow. "You're a good egg, Jim Gordon. I'm gonna go check on Ivy."

That was about as good as he was going to get, and he knew it, but he reached out to grab her wrist anyway, stopping her gently before she could go back inside. "Thanks for trying, Selina. You're a good egg, too."

She pulled her hand out of his grip, shaking it like she wanted to forget the contact. "No need to get mushy, Gordon. You _barely_ almost got stabbed."

"Yeah. Barely." He wasn't sure if she heard the last bit, but either way she didn't answer. When he turned to look again, she was gone.

After she left, he decided it was worse being alone with his thoughts than having her around, but he didn't want to make things worse for everyone else by going back when Lee wasn't ready for him. Selina wouldn't have come out here if Ivy was still trying to stab people, and he was reasonably sure Lee wouldn't forget he was out here. He'd just have to wait it out.

He closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind. The second his eyes were shut, he saw Ivy's face again, half fear and half anger as she rocketed out of bed, waking up and reaching for the knife in one movement. It reminded him more of his time in the Army than anything else and he had to open his eyes again, focusing on counting the bricks in the wall of the building across from them, or at least the ones he could see around the single light on the corner.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, but there were too many ways that was true for him to untangle them, anymore. Gotham was a mess, and his best efforts had barely made a dent in it. They'd just left him with an apartment full of teenage girls and a dozen reasons not to sleep at night.

Lee rapped at the window behind him. When he turned to look at her she smiled like it was just another night and nothing was any more wrong than usual, and maybe if he'd slept before the almost-stabbing, he'd be able to see it that way, too. Maybe.

"She's asleep," Lee said, "You can come back in now. I think there's still some cocoa."

The hot cocoa was in a pot on the stove, and though he initially thought it had gone sludgy from staying on the stove too long, his first sip of what was left revealed that it was also unpleasantly gritty, like whoever had made it had used too many packets of mix at once. He made a face and Lee laughed.

"Selina?" he asked.

She nodded, reaching over to turn the stove off, "She tries."

"Only when we're not watching," he answered absently, "Or you'd have told her to add more water."

Lee snorted, not quite laughing. "She's still trying."

He nodded, turning to look out into the living room. Selina wasn't there, but her friend Bridgit was still asleep on the couch, like she'd slept through the whole thing. He hoped she had, probably, though if she needed the sleep that much, there was probably something else under the surface he should be worried about.

Lee wrapped her arms around him from behind as he took another sip of the gritty cocoa.

"How'd we end up with kids?" he asked her, "I feel like it's too soon for us to have kids."

He could hear her smiling in the little puff of air she let out beside his ear. "That one's on you. I didn't ask you to adopt a witness. I didn't even know you yet."

"I'm not even sure if she saw anything," he answered pensively, "Not anymore."

"Well, it's a little late for that. Now we've got three of them."

He almost told her two, but she was right. Bridgit had been in their apartment for all of 36 hours, but if she didn't leave in the morning, she probably wasn't going to. He'd barely even met her yet, but here they were, watching her sleep like she was already theirs.

"I'm gonna put this in the microwave," he said, turning around so that Lee had to let go to get out of his way, "It needs at least 3 times more water."

She smiled at him, eyes twinkling, "Probably just twice as much."

He snorted. "Maybe."

He'd been planning to go to bed, but when Lee took his hand over the kitchen table after he sat down, he just stayed there, waiting for the sun to rise and enjoying the quiet with her.

**Author's Note:**

> I think the stakeout panned out, so probably he takes tomorrow off work and takes a nap while the girls are out. Not at school, mind you, just out. I'm not sure he's won that fight yet.
> 
> Also, just in case, please no spoilers in the comments! I'm cruising through this show pretty fast, but I don't know how long it's gonna take Netflix to get season 3, so...


End file.
